The release of the hagiographic new documentary about his global-warming crusade has turned Gore into a latter-day Jeremiah, warning us about our corrupt ways and our need to reform lest we reap the whirlwind.

This image dovetails nicely with the Populist Prophet Al Gore, the guy who popped up last year ranting like Howard Beale in “Network” about “digital brown shirts” whose supposedly fascistic domination of the public discussion means “America’s democracy is at grave risk.”

Arianna Huffington, among others, has grown besotted with Gore’s newfound “authenticity,” and contrasts it with Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s “triangulation” and “phoniness.” New York magazine slapped Gore’s face on the cover and dubbed him “The Anti-Hillary.”

Something else is whetting the appetites of Democrats and Leftists for a possible Gore challenge to his former boss’s wife. There’s talk that Gore has oceans of Google stock and stock options, which he could cash in for hundreds of millions of dollars and thereby self-finance a bid for the presidency.

Ah, to think of it! Such a self-financed bid would be free from the baleful influence of corporate monsters and Wall Street titans who drain the life’s blood from Democrats running for national office and seek to turn them into DINOs – Democrats in name only. The liberated Gore could run an anti-war, anti-warming, anti-corporate campaign that would represent an entirely new direction for the Democratic Party.

Gore’s fan club clearly believes the Real Al Gore isn’t the cautious Southern moderate who served as an elected politician for 22 years. Rather, Gore’s defeat in 2000 let him be reborn as a kind of political holy man who speaks his heart, a fearless advocate of “inconvenient truths” that the powerful and well-connected don’t want to hear.

This is a Democrat-Leftist fantasy of salvation. The Ariannas of the world are seeking salvation from the political trends of the past 25 years, which favor candidates who are willing to garb themselves in moderate and centrist clothing to get elected. They also desire salvation from the potential anguish of having to support a frontrunner named Clinton who voted for the war in Iraq.

And maybe, just maybe, the left-of-center political class is seeking salvation from the mood of overwhelming boredom that the all-but-ordained outcome in the Democratic primaries is generating.

Hillary Clinton is in a unique position in modern American political history. Polls of Democratic primary voters give her a 25- to 30-point edge over her closest potential rivals, Gore and John Kerry. Other names being floated – like former Virginia governor Mark Warner and Kerry’s pick for vice president, John Edwards -are barely registering at all.

This is a rare state of affairs for a Democrat. In the decades since state primaries moved from the control of party bosses to party voters, most open contests (meaning ones in which neither a president nor a vice president was running) have seen no such overwhelming leader of the Democratic pack.

There was a consensus Establishment choice in 1972 – Sen. Edwin Muskie – but he self-destructed before the New Hampshire primary. And Walter Mondale was out in front well before the 1984 political season began, but had to beat back a vigorous challenge from Gary Hart to secure the nomination. And in 1976, 1988, 1992 and 2004, no one candidate had any kind of a lead going into the Iowa caucuses.

This stands in sharp contrast to the GOP, which has had early front-runners in all four open contests in modern times – Richard Nixon in 1968, Ronald Reagan in 1980, Bob Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000. And the frontrunners took the prize every time. The reasons are simple – they sewed up the support of other politicians, they raised more money, and as they progressed they began to choke off the financial and media oxygen of other candidates.

Except for Nixon, the frontrunner didn’t just walk into the nomination. Somebody rose from the also-rans to give him a bit of run for his money. But in the end, the man leading at the start was the man delivering the acceptance speech at the GOP’s convention.

Unless she does something to disrupt her own progress, or unless something happens in the world that makes her candidacy untenable, Hillary will be the Democratic nominee. And there’s no doubt she will be a tougher candidate to defeat than Al Gore, whose message of onrushing global doom isn’t exactly the kind of optimistic promise of a better future that resonates with voters.

Thus this Democratic fantasy of salvation from Hillary Rodham Clinton may also the fondest wish as well for Republicans and conservatives who want to keep the White House in GOP hands come 2008.

John Podhoretz’s new book is “Can She Be Stopped? Hillary Clinton Will Be the Next President of the United States Unless . . .” jpodhoretz@gmail.com